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Gc 975.8 C36m 1727532
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REYNOLDS HISTORICAL GENEALOGY COLLECTION
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ALLEN COUNTY PUBLIC LIBRARY 3 1833 02408 0589
MISCELLANIES
OF
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GEORGIA,
Historical, Biographical, Descriptive, Etc.
BY ABSALOM H. CHAPPELL .
IN THREE PARTS,
PART I.
PROEME.
CHAPTER I .- THE OCONEE WAR.
CHAPTER II .- THE OCONEE WAR CONTINUED.
CHAPTER III .- ALEXANDER MCGILLIVRAY.
CHAPTER IV .- GEN. ELIJAH CLARK.
CHAPTER V .- COL. BENJAMIN HAWKINS.
JAMES F. MEEGAN,
ATLANTA, GA.
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Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2016
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1727532
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1874, by ABSALOM H. CHAPPELL, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington.
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TO THE HON. HENRY R. HARRIS, MEMBER OF CONGRESS FROM GEORGIA, TO WHOM THESE SHEETS ARE BEHOLDEN FOR SEEING THE LIGHT, THEY ARE INSCRIBED BY HIS KINSMAN AND FRIEND, THE AUTHOR.
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PROEME.
I have gotten beyond the Scriptural term of years allotted to man on earth. I have outlived my three score and ten. But although old age is fully upon me, I do not as yet feel its weight. Deep in the mid winter of life, I have not as yet felt its chill. I am sensible of no decline of physical health or mental alacrity, or warmth of heart. At no period have I enjoyed more consciously that great blessing, a sound mind in a sound body. In this respect I sometimes almost feel entitled to lay claim to what Cicero lauds in his immortal work De Senectute: Eam senectutem qua fundamentis ado- lesentia constituta est :- That old age which is built on the foundations of youth. Where these are sound and well laid, both mind and body are apt to bear up bravely under a pretty heavy superstructure of years, and to acquire hard- ness and strength, rather than incur premature decay from time.
Whilst, however, sustaining thus well the weight of age, I cannot help at the same time feeling how near my end really is. To me the horizon of life no longer recedes as I advance. It stands still and awaits me, and I must soon reach it and disappear beneath it from earthly view. But I recoil not from the near seen event. God has been pleased to grant me a length of years beyond the common lot. It saddens me to think how little good use I have made of them, how much I have been wanting to Him my Maker, to my- self and to my kind. Yet I have some comfort in the re- flection, that though I have fallen very short of my duty and of what I might and should have done in my day and gen- eration, still I have striven throughout life, and I trust not
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PROEME.
ineffectually, against the downward tendencies of my poor human nature and have sought to keep my soul erect and aspiring towards God and Heaven, and may I not humbly hope that when it shall pass from earth, it will be received into that celestial home for which it yearns.
I have reached a stage at which the mind has ceased to dwell over-fondly on things of the Present. Rather do I find myself inclining more and more to ruminate on my long, multifarious Past, and to ponder on the short, precarious future lying before me. Day by day I feel more strongly that the little time I have left is quite too little, in my ac- tual circumstances, for any important worldly effort or ef- fect, and every day I long, with growing solicitude and mis- giving for somewhat to do or attempt, that may promise to rescue my remaining days from the stigma of an inane and useless existence.
Were I in the zenith or not too far beyond the zenith of life, I would disregard the ruin war has brought upon me and set to work untiringly to retrieve my fortunes ; to which end I would have but to repeat, to live over again my past life, and upon the simple principle that like causes, if they have but time to operate, will produce like effects, I would be sanguine of being able to replace the lost fruits of the past with another ample store. But I have neither time nor strength left for this repetition,-for planting and culti- vating such another, or indeed any other crop. My down- fall has come upon me too late in life to admit of recupera- tion, and there is no alternative for me but to sit and die amidst its ruins. But still I would not sit idle and be ut- terly useless in the dear little circle which confines me. I would fain keep my mind bright and elastic and worthily at work in some way to the very last, if it were but for my own sake ;- and for the sake of the beloved ones involved in my impoverishment and to whom I can no longer bequeath money or money's worth, I would fain leave something be- hind me, which, if I can but be happy in its delivery, may be, if not a compensation, at least a consolation-something
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PROEME.
that will be precious to their hearts when I am gone, and I pray Heaven, solidly profitable to them for time and for eternity.
Behold here, why and for whom the impulse to write first seized me ! Aye, it was for the loving hearts and partial eyes of those to whom nothing that relates to me or pro- ceeds from me, can ever be devoid of interest ! It was for those to whom I feel that I am ever the same, though for- tune is no longer my friend, but has deserted me, and now instead of her, age and poverty are my companions, grimly escorting me to an humble grave which no marble will adorn or iron inclose. But little to me, marble tomb or iron inclosure. For I shall rest in thy bosom, Georgia !- thy skies over me, thine earth and air above and around me, thy sons and daughters, from generation to generation, side by side with me, and on thy maternal lap, beneath thy sacred, conscious sod, I shall sleep proudly, though sorrowfully, forever sensible of thy nobleness and worth, forever mourn- ing thy wrongs and ruin. A son's strong love for thee unites with a father's for his children to impel my pen, and it may be I have seen and known and heard enough, and felt and thought enough about thee and thine, to make some things that pen shall trace not wholly uninteresting to thy true children too.
CHAPTER I.
THE OCONEE WAR.
In the first year of the present century, the Oconee river, three miles from which I was then born, in Hancock county, was still the dividing line between a powerful, ever aggres- sive Anglo-American civilization on its eastern side, and the immemorial Indian barbarism which reigned as yet all the way from its western bank to the shores of the Pacific. But my, then clear and beautiful, native stream, on whose bright bosom, with its glorious garniture of towering, overhanging trees in their rich autumnal attire, I first gazed enraptured as the light canoe bore me, a child, swiftly across its placid, broad-seeming wave, safe in a mother's encircling arms and a father's skilled rowing hands, was not destined to retain much longer the distinction of being so important a bound- ary. The relentless tide of the white man's insatiable land- greed was already beating heavily against it, and soon swept over it, and in less than another year the red man was pressed back another and to him sad remove towards the setting sun. For it was the very next spring, in the month of April, 1802, that the Federal Government entered into the famous compact with Georgia, long celebrated in her annals, known as the Articles of Agreement and Cession, by which Georgia ceded to the United States the whole of her territory lying between her present western boundary and the Mississppi river, comprising nearly all of what now constitutes the two great States of Alabama and Mississippi. In return for which, besides a million and a quarter to be paid in money, the United States also stipulated to extin-
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THE OCONEE WAR.
guish for Georgia the aboriginal title to all the lands still occupied by the Indians within her thus reduced limits. And before the end of the year the National Administration, heedful of the obligation it had taken upon itself, hastened to take the first step in discharging it, by purchasing of the Muscogee or Creek Nation the fertile and beautiful tract of country spreading out west from the Oconee river to the Ocmulgee.
At this period, not twenty years had yet elapsed since Georgia had gotten from the Creeks and Cherokees the whole region, of which Hancock was only a very small part, commencing far down on the Altamaha, and lying first be- tween that great river and the Ogeechee, and then between the Ogeechee and the Oconee, all the way up to their sources, and from thence across, between lines nearly paral- lel, to the Savannah and the Tugalo :- A region nearly equal in extent, and more than equal in value and fertility, to all of organized Georgia as then existing ; a fact strongly showing what an important stride towards future develop- ment and greatness the State made when she effected that en- largement of her bounds, and how sagacious our predecessors of that day were in seizing the opportunity of effecting it, which presented itself at the triumphant close of the Revo- lutionary war ; up to which time all this country had re- mained in the hands of the Indians, Georgia having previ- ously acquired from them no more than a narrow strip along the sea-board from the Savannah to the St. Mary's, and another narrow strip running up between the Savannah and the Ogeechee, comprehending all Wilkes county as origi- nally constituted. Both the Creeks and Cherokees had sided and fought with Great Britain against us, during the Revolutionary war, and having failed with her and been left by her to their fate, they necessarily incurred the fate of the vanquished, and Georgia, as the victor, having them at her mercy, dictated such terms of peace as suited her, and obtained the large cession of lands above mentioned. But the termns were too hard upon the Indians for a sincere
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THE OCONEE WAR.
and solid peace, and it turned out, as might have been fore- seen, to be a hollow and unreal one. Treaties of peace were, indeed, made, but they brought no peace. They only terminated one war to sow the seeds and pave the way for another.
The Cherokees being comparatively weak and unwarlike and destitute of any very able and ambitious leadership among themselves, the lands also derived from them being of much less extent and value, the trouble our ancestors had with them never became so very formidable, and was much more easily composed.
Not so with the Creeks. They were by far the most nu- merous, powerful and warlike of all the Indian tribes in North America, and their name had gotten, during the Revolutionary war, to strike terror around every hearth- stone in Georgia. To them, moreover, had belonged the lower, and the larger and more valuable portion of our new acquisitions. Cherishing still the rancors of past hostili- ty, chafing under what they deemed the enormous price exacted for peace, and inspired by a supreme chief* of con- summate abilities, ambition and influence, and especially animated by hatred of Georgia, they utterly refused to ac- quiesce in the cession which a portion of their head men had made at Augusta in 1783, and resorted to arms against it and to resist our occupation of the ceded lands: In the irregular, desultory manner of savage warfare, they kept up for many years a struggle, frequently relaxed, sometimes even intermitted, yet always overhanging and threatening to break out in fresh incursions and outrages. The Geor- gians, nevertheless, or Virginians, as the Indians called them, thronged in great numbers and undeterred, into the contested territory and pitched their settlements wherever they best liked, upon soil which they were liable every moment to have to defend with their lives. They lived, of course, in perpetual peril, and were compelled to be always in arms and on the alert. It would not be too strong to say of the infancy of this part of the State that it was baptised
* Alexander McGillivray.
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THE OCONEE WAR.
in the blood of men, women and children. The reliance for defence was in part on a very few United States troops, gar- risoned here and there along the Oconee river, and on vol- unteer horsemen organized under State authority, in small bands, regularly officered, always ready to take the saddle, indeed most of the time in it, and actively traversing the country in all directions, attacking, repelling, pursuing, intimidating-to whose aid upon emergency all the fighting men rushed from their houses and fields at a moment's warning. All this, however, would not have sufficed with- out the help of other means, and as the best other means in their power, the different settlements took a somewhat mili- tary character, and might indeed have been not inaptly termed semi-military colonies. By their own voluntary labor the people of each neighborhood, when numerous enough, built what was dignified as a fort, a strong wooden stockade or block-house, entrenched, loop-holed, and sur- mounted with lookouts at the angles. Within this rude extemporised fortress ground enough was enclosed to allow room for huts or tents for the surrounding families when they should take refuge therein-a thing which continually occurred ; and, indeed, it was often the case, that the Fort became a permanent home for the women and children, while the men spent their days in scouring the country, and tilling, with their slaves, lands within convenient reach ; at night betaking themselves to the stronghold for the society and protection of their families, as well as for their own safety. Well do I remember the large, level old field in my maternal grandfather's plantation, which in my early boyhood, was still noted as having been the site of one of those forts. Also the creek near by took its name from the Fort, and was and is still called Fort Creck. My grand-father, however, a fresh emigrant from Virginia, did not like this mode of life for his wife and children, and established them for two years to the east of the Ogeechee in what was then Columbia county, whilst he with his negroes cleared land, ma de crops and faced the Indians in Hancock, or rather in what was
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THE OCONEE WAR.
then Washington county. For in February, 1784, the Leg- islature, acting upon the treaties to which I have alluded, made at Augusta the year previous, passed a law throwing open to settlers the whole of the new acquired country from the Altamaha to the mountains, and forming it into two vast counties, Washington and Franklin, whose huge size was afterwards, from time to time, diminished by carving out new counties, among them Hancock. Thus Washing- ton and Franklin, originally twin, coterminous counties, became disparted, and now an hundred intervening miles lie between them. But no length of time or width of space will ever dissociate the great and venerable names they bear.
CHAPTER II.
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THE OCONEE WAR CONTINUED.
This rancorous Indian broil lasted with many vicissitudes and various degrees of violence for some dozen years before it was finally extinguislied by the treaty of Colraine in June, 1796. All the while too it was intimately complicated with an obstinate territorial quarrel between the United States and Spain, growing out of their conflicting claims of sove- reignty to the entire Indian country west of the Chattahoo- chee : Spain claiming as her own all the region occupied by the Creeks and other tribes between that river and the Mississippi, upon the ground of having reconquered the province of West Florida from Great Britain during the Revolutionary war,-which re-conquest, as contended by her, covered all that country at least, if not much more. From this antagonistic Spanish claim sprang Spanish tam- perings with the Indians against us, the result from which, and from the hard, injurious treatment the Indians thought they had received from Georgia by the treaty of Augusta
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THE OCONEE WAR.
and the seizure of the Oconee lands, was that the Creek nation precipitately, in 1784, transferred to Spain in prefer- ence to the United States that allegiance or rather adherence that had just dropped from the vanquished hands of Great Britain. Their Supreme Chief, McGillivray, greatly in- censed by said treaty of Augusta and the proceedings of Georgia thereon, hastened to Pensacola as both sovereign and ambassador, and formed with the creatures of Spain there what was called a treaty of Alliance and Friendship, subjecting his people and country absolutely to the Spanish - yoke and sceptre. It is impossible to peruse this document without being amazed at the excessive subjugation it stipu- lates, so unlike anything in our Indian treaties, and the con- viction seizes upon the mind that a villainous fraud was practised by the Spaniards on McGillivray in the translation of it to him. For he was a stranger at that time to their language, though master both with his tongue and pen of ours. It can hardly be doubted that he became aware after- wards of the atrocious cheat that had been perpetrated upon him. But he hid the disparaging discovery in his own proud, politic bosom, at the same time silently ignoring and annulling by all his action the false, unstipulated matter foisted by the Spaniards into the treaty .* For he was alto- gether too shrewd to make proclamation of his having been their dupe ; a thing which would have damaged him deeply
*American State Papers-Foreign Affairs-Vol. 1, p. 278. - Where this ex- traordinary treaty will be found at length signed by McGillivray alone on the part of the Indians. In the treaty is contained a statement that McGillivray was made acquainted with its contents by "a literal and exact translation which was reduced by Don Juan Joseph Duforrett, Captain of the militia of Louisiana and Interpreter of the English Idiom for his Majesty in said Pro- vince." The existence of this treaty soon became a fact well known, and was, indeed, never intended to be concealed. That its previse character and contents, however, were kept secret for a long time is apparent from a diplomatic letter of our Commissioners in Spain, Messrs. Short and Carmichael, addressed to the Madrid Government in August, 1792, wherein, replying to a note of the Spanish Minister bringing forward the pretensions of Spain under that treaty, they say that its contents had never been made known to them, and therefore they could say nothing in respect to it .-. American State Papers- Foreign Af. fairs-Vol. 1, page 276.
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THE OCONEE WAR.
with his own people, besides forcing upon him a breach with the Spaniards as the only alternative to his own loss of honor.
But although foul towards the Indians, both in what it contained and the manner of its obtainment, the treaty of Pensacola undoubtedly had the effect of attaching the Span- iards closely to them as our enemies: not that they avowed themselves as such and openly took the field against us. It suited their ends better to stand masked behind the Indians, and to instigate, sustain and exasperate them in their hos- tilities and depredations. Hence, during the period after the Revolutionary war that the old Continental Confedera- tion was still subsisting as the only tie between the States, Georgia was all the while harassed by a huge two-fold trou- ble pressing upon her conjointly-an Indian trouble and a Spanish-and so thoroughly were these troubles conjoined that it was quite impossible to manage the nearer and more immediately perilous one, that with the Indians, with any success separately from its Spanish adjunct, from which it mainly drew its mischievous energies and means of annoy- ance. And yet this latter-the Spanish one-though, so potent in its effects against us, was not only locally distant and beyond the arm's reach of the State, but was also politi- cally outside of her jurisdiction, belonging, with the general mass of our foreign affairs, exclusively to the authorities of the Confederation .*
*Whilst Georgia during the Confederation always exercised a jurisdiction both of war and peace in Indian Affairs, which was never controverted by the United States, yet she was careful not to exercise it in any manner that might em- barrass the United States in the conducting of the great territorial dispute with Spain. Hence, although the Legislature in 1785, by way of asserting the title of the State and protesting against the adverse Spanish claim, passed an act creating the county of Bourbon, extending from the mouth of the Yazoo down the Mississippi to the 31st parallel, and as far eastwardly "as the lands reached which in that District had been at any time relinquished by the Indians," and which lands the Spaniards were taking steps to occupy and settle, yet Georgia stopped short with simply creating the county of Bourbon on her statute book, taking no proceedings of any kind under the law, and in 17SS quietly repealed it, because she saw that her attempting to carry it into execution would be
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THE OCONEE WAR.
It is not surprising that the State got along poorly with a task for which she was thus disabled at once by its distrac- tion and her own want of strength. She did her best, how- ever, confining herself to the Indian part of it, while the Confederation, through that eminent statesman, John Jay, as minister and secretary for Foreign Affairs, worried to quite as little purpose with the Spanish part.
Georgia, in her sphere, exerted herself not only in efforts of fighting and skirmishing, but also in a good deal of finesse and negotiation with the Indians. Her first essay in the last-mentioned way, after the opening of hostilities, was in the year 1785, and it resulted in the treaty of Galphinton, which, as to boundaries simply, reiterated the treaty of Augusta with a further cession of a considerable breadth of land between the Altamaha and the St. Mary's, which went by the name of Talassee or Talahassee .* Within another
likely to increase the difficulties of the United States in their diplomatic strife with Spain touching that and all the other territory then in dispute between the two countries .- For the Bourbon County Act and its repeal, see Watkins' Digest of the Laws of Georgia-304, 371.
*"Tallassee" is the name applied to this country by our Legislature in the Act of December 28th, 1794 .- Watkins' Digest, 551-Sce same Act, American State Papers, Indian Affairs, Vol. Ist, 551, 552. In various other places in the State Papers where mention is made of this country, it is called Talassee. But Mr. Jefferson in his annual message to Congress of December, 1802, calls it the Tallahassee country. In old Indian times of the last century the name belonged to the largest and most important of the political Districts into which the Creek, or, as it is styled in the treaty of Pensacola, the Tallaponchee nation was divided. It is the first named District in that treaty, and is men- tioned there as consisting of four towns. It undoubtedly embraced at that time an area much larger than the Galphinton cession. AH, indeed, of South Eastern Georgia, except the old counties of Glynn and Camden, and the larger part, if not the whole of Southern and Southwestern Georgia, was compre- hended in it; much likewise of Middle Florida-a fact recognized by the Floridians in the name they have bestowed on their capital. The Indians seem to have been greatly attached as well to the name as to that part of their country that bore it. Hence. McGillivray christened his chief residence on the Coosa "Little Tallassee," and the beautiful spot at the foot of the first falls of the Tallapoosa river was called Tallassee,-a name it bears to this day. "Gal. phinton" was a famous old Indian trading post on the Ogeechee some dozen miles below Louisville. "Shoulderbone" is the great creek of Hancock coun" ty .- For the Treaties, see Watkins, and Marbury & Crawford's Digests.
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THE OCONEE WAR.
year another treaty was needed, and in 1786 that of Should- erbone was made reaffirming the cessions of Augusta and Galphinton. All three of these treaties were transactions of Georgia alone with the Indians. The United States was neither a party to them nor had anything to do with them, and their effect was rather to deepen and exasperate than to extinguish or appease enmity. The Indians charged that they were sheer frauds, contrived by Georgia with persons of their tribe falsely pretending to have authority to treat. After much investigation at a subsequent period by Commis- sioners of the United States, a conclusion favorable to the fairness and authenticity of these treaties was reached .* The main thing, undoubtedly, which impaired them in Indian eyes was the expecting of aid from Spain in resisting them, and the belief that Georgia would be unable to enforce them against the combined Indian and Spanish opposition. For savages, not unlike civilized people, are very much in- clined, when under the influence of strong passions or inte- rests, to trample on good faith and the sanctity of compacts, unless deterred by the dread which superior power on the adverse side is apt to inspire. Hence hostilities continned to rage, not the less, perhaps even the more, on account of these abortive attempts at pacification ; and there is no tell- ing what might not have been the disastrous upshot, had not the new Federal Constitution been adopted, and under it a new government started in 1789 for our young Federal Republican nation, strong enough to inspire the Indians with a salutary fear, and clothed with the whole war-making and treaty-making power; and also with the absolute control over all Indian as well as all foreign affairs. By this wise and happy concentration, all the reins over the subject, as well in its Indian as its Spanish aspect, were gathered into one great, commanding, national grasp, and were from thenceforth handled in unison, and with abundant judgment, skill and success.
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